CHEAP CANCUN HOTELS

Intimidated by the costs of the world-class Cancun Hotels? Wishing you could spend more money on having fun and less money on your Cancun hotel? You've come to the right place! For the REALLY cheap lodging, such as Cancun Hostels, please visit our Cancun Hostels or Cancun Budget Hotels pages. This page will help you find the best deals on Cancun hotels. See our Hotel Map.

How to save money on your Cancun Hotel

Whenever we plan for a trip, we always go through these steps. We've found some great deals and we have yet to get skunked out by a bad hotel. Most of your trip will be at your hotel, either sleeping, eating, swimming, or sunbathing. Make sure it's what you're looking for!

Rule #1. Cancun All-Inclusive or Hostel? What about a Vacation Rental?

Resort Hotels

Bed & Breakfasts

Hostels

Budget Hotels

Vacation Rentals

The first step is to figure out what type of Cancun accommodations you want. A Cancun all-inclusive resort is the most expensive, but all your food and drinks are included in the meals package, making it easy to decide where to eat each night. Most have many restaurants and bars to choose from. If you plan on staying at your hotel and taking it easy, then this option may work well for you. Certainly, the nicest Cancun hotels are all-inclusives.

However, if you're the active sort that wants to experience local Cancun dining and eateries, and local hangouts, skip the Cancun all-inclusive and go with a hotel-only resort or a Cancun budget hotel. You'll pay way too much and get way too little otherwise. If you're really on a budget, Cancun hostels are right downtown near everything and start at only $5 per night! Bottom line: Don't spend more than what you'll really use!

If you've got a big family and are looking at more than one hotel room, there's a good chance you'll save a lot of money by looking into a Cancun vacation rental, such as a villa or a condo. You might not get all the fancy features of an all-inclusive hotel, but you'll have an apartment or a villa instead of a hotel room, and your wallet will thank you!

Cheap Cancun Hotels Rule #2 Shop Around!

Cancun Hotels

Playa del Carmen Hotels

Riviera Maya Hotels

Cozumel Hotels

There are so many Cancun hotel reservation sites out there, it's hard to know where to start sometimes. One thing that is certain is that it pays to shop around the big discounters. If you don't, you might miss out on the great deal that one discounter has with the particular Cancun hotel you're interested in. If you visit a site you've never heard of, it is probably affiliated with one of the big discounters, and you'll just find the same prices you've seen already. Save your time and energy, and stick to the big guns. We have the following sites stored in our favorites, and we ALWAYS visit them all to see who is offering the best rates. We find that we don't really favor one over the others because it just varies each time which is better.

Sky Auction and E-Bay Travel are the two biggest online auctions sites that we've used. Bids often start at just $1.00 - you can find some excellent deals here. Make sure to read the fine print, though - taxes and fees are often very high.

The big discounters like Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Priceline, and Travelocity are always excellent places to find hotel deals - you'll usually save a lot of money on their featured properties. Each one will have different deals, so make sure to take a look at all of them to compare, or use a multi-engine site like Booking Buddy to take a look at all of them in one convenient place. We don't recommend booking your tours and activities or airport transfers from these type of sites, though, as you won't find the local expertise or discounts you'll find from a local site. See our discounted Cancun Tours for this.

The third place we recommend checking out is local Cancun agencies - sometimes they can strike deals that the big companies can't get because they know somebody, etc. Guess who we recommend? Of course it's...US! See our complete list of hotel rates here.

Cheap Cancun Hotels Rule #3 Consider a Cancun Vacation Package

Cancun Vacation Packages are often (but not always) a great way to save money on your Cancun trip. Many hotels will offer their rooms practically for nothing if you buy airfare and/or a rental car with it. All the big discounters listed above offer vacation packages, but there are often good deals directly from the airlines themselves! On my last trip to Denver, I booked a hotel package through Travelocity, and actually paid less than I would have paid for just the airfare alone!

Of course, you may be more restricted on the hotels you can choose from, the dates you can travel, etc. but many times you can find one that suits your needs.

If you follow these guidelines, chances are you'll have an excellent trip and save a lot of money. If you have a hotel discount or rule you'd like to share with us, please Contact Us. We'd love to hear from you!

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